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A Lumberjack in the Family
EMILY
Half of me was with Archie as we wandered the baby section at Walmart and picked out a car seat and enough other baby gear to outfit a small village of babies. But the other half? The other half of me was back in that hotel room, watching the pain that physically wracked through him as he talked about what had happened the day my brother died. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it all night and then this morning in the shower. I was doing my best to hold myself together, to compartmentalize. But it was hard.
I’d never really blamed Archie Kasper, not like my father did. It wasn’t that Dad’s pain was deeper than mine—my brother and I had been close and it hurt to miss him so much. I guessed it was that Dad’s pain was different because he was different. And maybe there was something about losing a child that made you irrational, unable to consider any scenario beyond the one your pain-riddled mind chooses.
It had been hard to hear, nonetheless. Archie’s words had taken me to the day of the accident in a way no naval officer’s condolence speech or news report had ever done. In one perspective, it was closure. But it also renewed the pain of exactly how Jake had died. What had happened to him. And where he was now.
Nowhere.
Nowhere we could ever find him, at least.
But this was why I had come to Kasper Ridge, wasn’t it? To see if the bogeyman in every one of my father’s tales really did have red gleaming eyes and sharp slavering teeth.
Turned out he didn’t.
But now? I’d gotten in far deeper than I’d meant to.
The one person who would give me clear-sighted perspective on the whole mess was gone. Jake would know what to do. He would say the perfect thing, make me feel better about everything.
Of course, if Jake was here, I wouldn’t be.
And the guilt and betrayal made me feel dirty and ashamed of myself.
“What do you think?” Archie was holding up a tiny pair of jeans and an itty-bitty flannel shirt.
I laughed and took them from his hands, admiring the sheer adorableness of minuscule clothing. “I think he’s not going to be dressing like a lumberjack for a while. Probably one of these things is a better choice.” I pulled a sleeper from the rack. “And a hat.”
“So small,” Archie said softly, reaching for a little cotton cap.
“Blanket?” I suggested. I imagined the tiny guy in his car seat heading up into the mountains with winter coating the ground all around us.
“Good call.” Archie pulled out his phone and inventoried what was in the cart. “I think this is everything Wiley said we’d need. Think we should get a toy, too?”
I smiled at the new uncle’s enthusiasm. “I think babies pretty much just eat, poop, and sleep for the first few months. Not a lot of toy handling.”
He frowned, and then picked up a stuffed elephant from the shelf. “They snuggle though.” He didn’t sound sure, so I affirmed this for him.
“I think they snuggle, yes.” I took the elephant from his hands and added it to the cart, working to enjoy myself but fighting with a need to retreat, to think. “Ready?”
“Yep.”
We checked out and then dropped through the diner across the parking lot to pick up a to-go order that the waitstaff probably assumed was for at least ten people. And then we headed up to see Aubrey and Wiley.
I felt a little out of place when the attendant took us both back onto the ward—I wasn’t family, but she didn’t ask any questions. Aubrey had her own room, and she was nestled into her bed with the baby tucked up close against her, asleep. Wiley sat at her side, scrolling through his phone.
I would have been hesitant to interrupt such an idyllic scene, but the second she spotted us, Aubrey’s face erupted into a huge smile. “Oh thank god. Food.” She kissed Finn’s tiny head and carefully moved him to the bassinet at the side of her bed, and then reached out toward Archie with both hands making a grabbing motion. “What’d you get me?”
“Everything,” her brother said, pulling the rolling table close.
We unpacked the food and after Aubrey had first dibs, we all dug in. It was so natural I almost didn’t question it, but it was also so far from the kind of family experiences I’d had lately, I couldn’t help but feel touched to be included. Things were soeasy between the Kaspers. Maybe this is how Jake and I would have been. In some strange way, being with them filled a void I hadn’t realized was there.
“So,” I asked. “How was the first night of parenthood?”
Wiley’s smile was so wide, I could already feel his pride beaming through it. “Pretty amazing.”
Aubrey scoffed. “You slept through it.”
